


Bad to the Bones

by isabeau, Miriam (isabeau)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Humor, Really old fic (pre-2000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-01-01
Updated: 2000-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabeau/pseuds/isabeau, https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabeau/pseuds/Miriam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles has a skeleton in his closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad to the Bones

Rupert Giles was having an interesting dream involving Ms Calendar and  
some whipped cream, when the doorbell rang.

"Damn," he muttered, when he was sufficiently aware of his surroundings to  
realize that Ms Calendar was nowhere to be seen. Resigned to being awake,  
he wriggled into his bathrobe - red velvet, of course, trimmed with gold  
thread - and matching slippers, and trudged to the door. "I hope it's  
important," he called as he threw the locks. "You woke me up from a  
really good dream." Somehow this seemed wrong for him to say, but he  
shrugged that off and opened the door.

"Hello, little brother," answered his visitor.

"I, uh...Adam?" Giles stammered incredulously. The man - dressed in  
leather trousers and a dark violet shirt - looked dizzyingly like a cross  
between what Adam had looked like last time Giles had seen him alive, and  
what he would look like if he were still alive.

"I, uh, Rupert?" Adam mimicked, not unkindly. "Good to see you."

Giles said a few incoherent things, and then managed "But, ah, you're,  
you're dead, aren't you?"

"Perfectly dead," Adam said cheerfully. "For which I do believe I have  
you to thank, my dear brother."

Giles took off his glasses and polished them nervously. "I, ah, ah, that  
is, well, it was an accident." He fell back a step, and Adam took the  
opportunity to come in.

"Nice room," Adam murmured, trailing his fingers along a brass desk-lamp  
on the desk nearest the door. It was then that Giles realized that the  
room was different. Not, as expected, the small but functional apartment  
in Sunnydale, lined with books too valuable or interesting to risk at the  
high school library, but instead the dormitory room he had lived in at  
Oxford. Rupert started to say something - which, given his thought  
processes at the time, would have come out like a cross between "What...?"  
and "Ahh-uh" - but Adam continued, in a voice that was deceptively  
mild.

"Accident, hmmm? Funny, I seem to remember your telling the police that  
it was a - what was it? 'Stress-induced suicide'?"

Giles reached up to take off his glasses, and then realized that they were  
still off, so rubbed the bridge of his nose instead. "It was. Both.  
Sort of."

A framed picture stood on the desk; Adam picked it up. "She's your first,  
isn't she?"

"Wha - who?"

"The Slayer." Adam flipped the picture over so Giles could see. It was a  
picture of Buffy - Rupert couldn't remember having it, but this whole  
thing was so bizarre that he wouldn't have been terribly surprised at pink  
elephants.

"Uh, well, yes."

"Thought so." Adam nodded slowly, and ran his long fingers over the  
photo. His gaze was almost adoring. "You're doing a pretty poor job, I  
must say. Letting her get killed like that - tsk tsk."

"I'm doing the best I can," Giles protested. "I'm her Watcher-"

"Are you, now?" Adam tossed the photo back onto the desk, and the glass  
over Buffy's face cracked slightly on impact. "That's very, very odd.  
Because, you see, I seem to remember Father saying that _I_ was the  
Watcher. Not you."

"But you died." Giles shook his head. "You died, so you couldn't be the  
Watcher, so I had to take over."

"I died. Right." Adam's smile was cold, reminding Giles of a snake about  
to strike. "Funny how I forget things like that. I died, by - what,  
again? Accidental suicide?"

"It was an accident," Giles repeated stubbornly. "I just had to write the  
suicide note to throw suspicion off myself."

"An accident, right. You _accidentally_ let your jealousy get the  
better of your common sense?"

"You didn't deserve to be the Watcher! I was the smart one, _I_  
should have been the Watcher. You were always off flirting with the  
girls! I _still_ can't understand why Father chose you instead of  
me!"

"Maybe because I'm not given to uncontrollable surges of jealous rage?"  
said Adam quietly.

Giles had the sudden urge to throttle Adam, or stake him through the  
heart, anything to shut that voice up. That voice, mocking, calm, always  
right...

"Goodbye, little brother," Adam said, fading out, smirking like a Cheshire  
cat. "Enjoy your failures."

Giles swung his fist rather wildly at the rapidly disappearing face, as  
hard as he could, but it didn't feel like a face. It felt rather like-

A pillow.

Giles blinked at the pillow he was punching, and then looked around. He  
was back in his Sunnydale apartment. Gone was the picture-- the desk--  
the dormitory room-- and Adam. Sunlight cheerily crept in through cracks  
around the curtains. He'd probably overslept, but that could be easily  
rectified.

"A dream," he gasped, "it was all a dream." He stared in relief up at the  
pillow, and then allowed himself to smile.

Inside the walk-in closet in his bedroom were rows of shirts, jackets,  
vests, and pants. He selected an outfit, and dressed in front of the open  
closet. "You can't win, Adam," he murmured, adjusting his tie. "I've  
beaten you, and no amount of dreams can change that. And I _am_ the  
Watcher, as far as she is concerned."

Behind the clothes, a skeleton - bones as polished as possible, neatly  
held together with steel wiring, and dressed in a neatly-ironed tweed suit  
\- grinned back at him, and said nothing.

"You see, Adam," Giles continued, almost as an afterthought, "you wouldn't  
have made a good Watcher. Father was too blind to see that, and so were  
you, which is why I had to kill you. You see that now, don't you?" With  
a quirk of a smile, he shut the closet doors and went off to his second  
home, the library at Sunnydale High School.

In the darkness of the closet, the skeleton continued to grin.

**Author's Note:**

> (this was written very early on in Buffy's run, probably in the summer between seasons 1 and 2, just for characterization context)


End file.
